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Topic: BF20L Mill Stand (Read 5302 times)

[1] Blanks cut out from my pristine stock of 1215 steel[2] The M12 thread is cut on the lathe and 17mm round is drilled and reamed to 12mm and all ready to start assembly[3] Test fit looks good.[4] finally all together and the square end cut on Bruce's Luxcut. Original bar in the background.[5] A closer look at the thread. I'm a little bit proud of this one as it's a very clean fit in the M12 ER32 collect chuck and let's face it, I'm an absolute newbie at lathe work.[6] The first bit of work using the new bar. The virgin cut as it were.

That looks the business I wonder why they supplied the original with a Whit thread

So what's next to be made for it? A few tools? Tee nuts.... clamps...

Jo

The whit thread is a feeble attempt to lock people into buying the rest of the tooling from that supplier of the mill. So now I'm all good for the cheaper M12 tooling.

I've ordered a clamping kit, it just sooo much cheaper/quicker to get going. But I am going to get some bar stock to allow me to make more t-nuts to support broader clamping options.

I have a plan to make some tool maker clamps as well as add-ons to the bench grinder plus some stuff around dial-indicators. :-) The machine shop journey is really starting now. Lathe and mill - soo much fun to be had.

Time to progress the stand a bit further and come up with a way to prevent chips being flung far and wide around the garage. I remember seeing someone from somewhere making a curtain arrangement around their mill using heavy clear plastic. I kind of liked that idea so I have source a good supply of 0.5mm clear plastic sheet. Which seems to be a reasonable balance between flexibility and toughness. Then it was on to Fusion 360 for some design playing. So here is the concept model. The material will be 19mm square tubing with a 2-3mm wall. The risers are planned to be 1000m above the table top. with the stand this keeps the top "halo" well above my head height. The two side haves will be a welded shape (I don't have any bending tooling) with the triangle gussets and back cross bar bolted together wth M6 bolts. The risers will be bolted to the base frame with twin M6 bolts on each side.

A little update on some changes to the mill stand. Really the next stage where I'm doing something more sensible with the space available. And yes the top of the table is a mess. I'm still tidying things up post working with the brown woddy stuff. I'm still working/thinking through the chip containment with some different directions taken and will update on that soonish. You can see in the first pic I have added a big wood backing to the stand that stops things flying to the rear.

Nice job Joco! I like the casters+leveling feet idea, assume you have the casters off the floor when the feet are extended? Have you done any heavy cuts yet? I think your bracing system should keep it pretty rigid.

Nice job Joco! I like the casters+leveling feet idea, assume you have the casters off the floor when the feet are extended?

Correct. The levelling bolts/feet extend down and lift the wheels off the floor. Result is a pretty rigid setup. It could probably be made even more rigid if bolted to the floor but I really didn't want to start putting holes into my garage floor unless there was a SERIOUSLY good reason.

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Have you done any heavy cuts yet?

I think "heavy" is probably relative. In aluminium with a good sharp 2-flute cutter I can can chew in at 3+mm no problems. Just need to keep squirting in some WD40/Kerosene and a few puffs of compressed air to clean out chips. Roll on the next project - NoFogMister.

On the steel front I can manage a 1mm (maybe 2mm) depth cut if careful using HSS or Carbide end mills. My 40mm insert face mill caps out at about 1mm before things start to rattle. The BF20 (aka G0704) is a small mill and just does not have enough mass to really chew into things. I still day dream of a Bridgeport like knee mill. One day maybe, when I find enough room to put it, and can convince SWMBO that I need it.

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I think your bracing system should keep it pretty rigid.

After adding the side panels as bracing the strength/rigidity of the frame improved markedly. I did the same on the lathe stand and that improved massively as well. Learning being, if making a frame like this adding membranes for shear strength in the side planes is absolutely what you need to do. I used 18mm plywood. Using 2-3mm steel sheet would have been less thick (probably heavier) but achieved the same or perhaps even slightly better results.